


Touched by Frost

by neverwitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Asgard, Feelings, Hate Kissing, Heartbroken Thor, Kissing, Loki in chains, Love/Hate, M/M, One Shot, Post-Avengers (2012), Thor Needs a Hug, mean Loki, slightly psychotic Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9914702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwitch/pseuds/neverwitch
Summary: It was mean. It was low. But it was revenge. It was the least (and the most)  he could do while he was imprisoned.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this was actually a four-chapter story...but I couldn't find the time to finish it. So I'm posting the second chapter as a one-shot fic and discarding all the rest. Hope you enjoy ;)

Thor's hand held the end of the iron chain that ran around Loki's neck like a devious necklace, clinking and clanking in the tense air with each step they took. Or was the tension only his?   
Loki seemed totally unfazed. His expression was intently focused on being unfocused, on being not bothered at all by the fact that he was being led by the neck by the god of thunder. The only emotion—if there was any—that could be gleaned from the smooth terrain of his face was boredom—or serenity in its dull extremes. Why would he show even the smallest interest in his surroundings, after all? These very walls were detested reminders plastered with past memories and hostile guards. Every inch of steel and every burnished brick of Asgard was just another kind of prison to him. It didn't matter if he was inside or outside of his cell. As long as he had his feet in All-Father Odin's kingdom, he was physically bound and trapped. He didn't need those heavy handcuffs to remind him he was a prisoner when just about everything he saw jeered it out to his face. He walked behind Thor, quiet and indifferent to every detail of his home.  
Thor hated this; hated the chains, hated the strain, hated the strange and alien creature trailing behind him. No, hated the strangeness and alienness of the person trailing behind him; he didn't hate Loki himself. Sif often told him he was mental for feeling anything less than disgust towards "the serpent," and sometimes he wondered if he was. Because every time his eyes landed on his brother, the sight of him brought nothing but a wrenching pain in his chest.   
Their boots hit the hard floor in rhythmic echoes that carried through the marble hall.  
Frigga had wanted this; she had wanted Loki to be allowed outside his cell once in a while. Perhaps once every few days? No, was that too much? Perhaps once every two weeks? Because she wanted her son (she forgot to say 'adopted son' every time she mentioned him) to "return" to what he was. She wanted him to find the "peace" of his former days. She so desperately wanted the old Loki back. Almost as much as Thor did. They both loved/had loved him. They both didn't understand him. They didn't understand that the old Loki was someone who was subtly bullied by Thor's gang of friends and ever so slightly nudged out of every honorary combat held on the soils of Asgard. Non-feisty, quiet, oblivious, tame—everything Loki couldn't bear to go back to again.   
As soon as they were out of the halls, Thor led Loki through less frequented pavilions and garden paths, where even the palace gardeners sometimes forgot to tend to the plants. Weaving their way through grass and bushel, they could hear the cries and grunts from the distant combat grounds. A female war-cry rose among all the others and cut the air with ringing resonance. Thor's lips twitched. Must've been Sif. Volstagg and Fandral would be somewhere around her, fending off her vicious attacks and trying to restrain her from berserking on the fields. At the same time, he was unpleasantly reminded of the burly warriors who'd thrown rocks at Loki the first time he'd been led into the palace by the front gate. Thor didn't want that. He didn't want to make a clowning spectacle out of themselves, out of Loki even less. They were suffering enough without even further publicity.   
"He doesn't want to be seen with me, the psychotic and disgraced adoptee." Loki thought.   
They trudged on in silence for another 3 minutes until they came to the edge of the palace grounds, right on the outskirts of a small forest. On the verge of dried leaves and broken twigs, Thor opened his mouth.   
"Where...would you like to go?"  
"The forest."  
This time, Loki advanced in front of Thor and led the way. The first dead branch snapped under his leather boot as he stepped into the not-too-dense, not-very-shady woods. Sunlight filtered through the green foliage and hung about his hair like gold-dust on black satin. He stood still for a long time, back turned towards his brother, not uttering a syllable as if in a trance.   
Thor, uneasy, stepped forward to make sure Loki was still alive when a snowflake touched his nose. He looked up towards the sky and saw all the leaves and boughs and rays of sun were gone. In their place was an uninterrupted stretch of pale, white firmament the color of pearl-grey. The air was very cool, almost cold. The gently rotting dirt and stones were thickly covered in a blanketed of snow. Snowflakes continued to float lazily down to earth, quiet and solemn. Thor shivered, but not with the lowered temperature. His eyes fixed themselves on the back of Loki's head.   
"Is this you?" He whispered, as if the very beasts of the forest might hear.   
"It is my imagination, and my frost-giant," Loki answered. "It is part of me. It is not me."  
He still did not turn around. Thor approached him, close enough to touch. He hesitantly reached out, ignoring an instinctual warning telling him not to. He set his hand on the iron collar around his neck.   
"Turn around," he muttered softly. "I'll unlock the chain."  
Loki exhaled deeply. Then, he closed his eyes. Then, slowly, he pivoted on one heel.   
Thor's hair stood on end.   
Loki's pale, marble-like flesh was steeped through with the ice-blue garbs of a Jotun, chillingly alien on his eloquent features and horrifyingly unfamiliar to the sight. Thor knew what he was going to find under those eyelids even before they were lifted.   
Loki opened his eyes.   
Blood-red irises shone into marine ones. The snow fell just a little harder, and Thor actually shuddered. His hand was frozen in mid-air, near the lock of the iron collar. For a moment, his breath stuck to the back if his throat and refused to be choked out into the cold.   
"I thought you were about to unlock this?"   
The insolently lifted chin, the arrogant tone, the unfathomable calmness of Loki's whole demeanor disarmed him. Was this another illusion? Drawing shaky oxygen from an icy well of air, he freed the slender neck of his brother from the heavy confinement and laid it on the ground, dropping the end of the chain with it. But he did not ask him for his wrists to be freed as well, nor did Loki ask for it. He simply pivoted on his heels again, and ambled down to a nearby oak. He lowered himself down to sit at the foot of the dark tree, stretching himself out among the knots of age-old roots with eerie grace. He closed his eyes and fell asleep for ten seconds while his blue Jotun pallor seeped back out, rolling back like liquid mist from his face. The snow fell harder around his form. He tilted his head back and parted his lips a little to admit the ice flakes on his tongue, brow peacefully relaxed as if in restful slumber. His raven-black hair tumbled down across his ivory neck, the sharp contrast making it seem chalk-white. Crisp-cool air swirled around inside his mouth before slushing down his throat like weightless water. The snow carpeted beneath his legs and powdering his folded arms felt soft and nice—so much nicer than the granite of his cell.   
"I do this sometimes in my room," he explained to no one in particular. Liar. He was talking to the warm body approaching his. Thor drew closer to the half-reclining figure of the once-lovely creature he'd known, now nothing but a ghost of the rose he'd loved despite all its thorns. Why his heart still squirmed every time Loki's eyes caught his, he had no idea.   
He had no idea why he was lying to himself.   
"My limbs are feathers when they're sunk beneath the frost," he heard him murmur. "It's like being dead...without the after-life part."   
An excruciating pause. During which Thor's heart welled with discomfort.   
"I wait for the snow to reach up to my chin and weigh down on my chest like piles of stones...I illusion myself gone."  
He opened his eyes, and turned his gaze on his brother.   
"Sometimes I illusion you gone."  
His words grabbed a fistful of Thor's guts and twisted them into a gore.   
"And does it comfort you to imagine me dead?" He asked, pupils pierced with something very hard. The thin, delicate valleys of Loki's mouth curved into a genuine smile that fully reached to his eyes, an expression of pure, unadulterated happiness only a child could've replicated.   
"So much."  
"You sick—"  
"Because it means the things I had with you are forever out of my reach."   
An easy smile from Loki quieted Thor.   
"Once you are gone, or I am gone, not a thread would be left of it to hope after."  
"You killed every trace of it when you tried to end my life over and over again, Loki." Thor replied, bitterly lacing the words around the spiky beanpole. "You already killed hope, both yours and mine." His voice came out more harshly than he felt. Right now he just felt sick. He had to clench his two jaws shut tightly to keep himself from vomiting words he knew he'd regret later. Loki lowered his eyes to his two hands.   
"And now that I've pulled everything down, I should not regret my decision."  
"No, you should not."   
So many unspoken words, pooling like blood between them, drenched the landscape. Thor tried not to look at him, look at his hung head, look at his unreadable figure; the eyes that were hidden from view, curtained behind dark curly tresses; the pale chin and defined jaw. He tried not to look, and could not help but see the slight tremble rocking his lips.   
He felt his eyes widen when Loki lifted his face.   
"But what if I do?"   
Thor couldn't handle this--couldn't handle the brokenness, the moisture, the desperation shining so, so transparently in those green orbs. Loki was looking up at him, cracking and fraying on the edges right before his eyes as if he'd managed to hold down a flood of inner chaos from bursting out until now, as if right now he couldn't manage that anymore. As if he couldn't strangle it anymore. Thor's veins pulsed, incensed.   
"What if you do? WHAT IF YOU DO?"  
His fingers curled into fists, a rumble of thunder resonating somewhere in the distance.   
"You chose! You had the chance to, no, not to do what you did and scratch everything and fight with me! Return home with me! Start over with me! You decided on your own and stuck to your decision, so faithfully, to the end—"  
A loaded tone, toxin-dosed with twisted sarcasm.   
"—and now you come regretting? What does that make me, Loki? What?"  
Thor couldn't hold on to his rage as a single tear started to escape the fences of Loki's eyelashes. That tear cost him so much--his fury, his confusion, his pain. He couldn't bear it as another one followed down the track of the first. Why? Why wasn't he the only one hurting? Why the hell was HE in pain? Why the hell were they both suffering from a broken heart, when only one of them had the right to be heart-broken?   
He couldn't believe he felt grief, not only for himself, but for both.  
He took a sudden step forward, towering over Loki. Ymir, had Loki just flinched away from him? Did he think Thor was going to attack him?   
He dropped to his knees and grabbed Loki's jaw in his hand. Roughly pulling him towards him, Thor glared up at him beneath his eyelashes and groaned.   
"You just have to hammer the last nail into my guts, don't you?"   
He tasted salt as he tugged his face into his in a crash.   
Thor kissed him, unpenetrating, simply searing his familiar flavor into Loki's lips. For a moment, neither of them moved. The Jotun was very, very still beneath him. Thor wondered if the lips under his were a statue's. He could hear its halted breath bubbling in his lungs, stunned and burning.   
'Breathe, Loki,' Thor thought.   
'Breathe.'   
Their contact was the only warm point in this whole December landscape. The drift of snow had stopped at some point. All around them it was impossibly silent, as if the sound of their fleshly collision had deafened them to all else. Not even the sound of dust landing on ice could be heard.   
Loki's eyes slid shut as Thor began to move. His brother's mouth moved against his, insisting warmth into the thin layer of his skin, nibbling out wafers of frost from between the creaky lines running down his vessels.   
So soft.   
So tender.   
A blush rose to his cheeks as he felt Thor's teeth on his bottom lip. A small sigh escaped as his mouth parted on their own, as if in a reflexive reaction to this person who'd kissed him this way a thousand times before. He smelled like sun-baked earth with a dash of rosemary and honeysuckle and oh, the kiss was becoming so deep without any tongue.   
Thor's head spun with memories of withered joys, the clumsy romance and the secret hours after midnight, after their parents had gone to bed. His hand traveled around to the back of Loki's neck to cradle his head, just the way he'd done in the past as many times as there were stars in Heimdall's eyes.   
Odin had asked him; why look so far away when the prize was right before his eyes? When there was Sif? Thor had just laughed it over and never given a proper answer, because he himself knew full well what it was.   
This was the answer.   
All those years and he'd still thought of Loki Laufeyson.   
And now he was crushing his heart out into his mouth, trying to make him understand how much hurt he'd caused him and how, despite all the pricks and pinches, Thor still wanted him, this constant brier in his breast.   
'You were right Sif. I am crazy.'   
Thor uttered an aching moaned as the tip of Loki's tongue gave a delicious brush. The nostalgic sensuality would've turned him on if it weren't for the tear threatening to gather in his own eyes. His fingers wove themselves into the shadowy locks and caressed them, perhaps not as adoringly as he used to, but more emotionally than then.   
How much he'd missed this.  
How much he'd missed him.   
"Loki..."  
He breathed.   
Then he cried out in pain. He jerked back violently. He tasted blood. His eyes met Loki's twisted lips.   
He had bit him.   
"Thor, Thor..."   
Loki crooned. He leaned forward and touched his forehead to his brother's chest.   
"I love it when you're hurt."   
Then he shoved him away with all his might. Thor stumbled backwards and landed on his hips. Every gut and organ in his body disemboweled themselves and splattered all over the ground along with his capability of thinking.   
He heard him shout.   
"You crawl like a worm towards the bird, Thor. How many times do you have to do this until you realize this is all you'll get from me? Daggers and crocodile's tears!" 

Why do you always fall for my tricks and let yourself be lured in right to where it hurts the most and make me feel terrible for getting what I want? Why do you make vengeance taste so vile when I want to exalt in the pleasure of it? Why? What is it that you do to me every time I thwart you?

Thor could only stare. How anyone could be so utterly cruel, he did not want to think. He didn't have to think. He'd already tasted it one too many times. Loki licked his lips once, removing the last of his ex-lover's fluid before rising up and gliding past him. The sound of a metallic rattle, then a decisive clunk as the cold iron collar fastened shut around his neck once more. Without another word he dragged the loose end of the linked rings, and headed back for the palace. He did not look back to see if Thor was following him. He already knew the stunted fool was still sitting there, shocked out of presence.   
Clink  
Clink  
Clink  
The linked rings of metal scratched against the forest floor as gravel reemerged from the illusionary snow, poking out their bumpy faces to see the gods' shame. Heavy boughs, light and shade, rays of sun slowly presented themselves again as Loki walked away.   
The magic was dispelled.   
Thor sat in a puddle of yellow illumination, gazing at the spot where Loki had sat underneath an oak tree and made a mummy out of him a moment ago. The place where he'd bitten him still stung beyond measure.   
It throbbed.


End file.
